


set yourself on fire

by hyugesoo



Series: souls cross ages like clouds cross skies [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: BAMF Azula, BAMF Daenerys Targaryen, BAMF Viserys Targaryen, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fire Nation Royal Family, Gen, I JUST WANTED A REALLY BADASS DANY OK, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Like From The Very Start, Manipulation, Reincarnation, Unhealthy Relationships, What-If, also, also no drogo sorry, and like a sorta good viserys, azula died during the last agni kai with zuko, because everyone always shits on him, dany and viserys are too OP, i mean i shouldn't have to tag that since it's targaryens, not just after she loses her husband and son, there are like so many feelings i guess, they break the free cities and westeros, they can probably pick me up with one hand and snap me like a twig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25524289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyugesoo/pseuds/hyugesoo
Summary: Azula dies, lightning crackling under her nails and cruelty on her face.Daenerys Targaryen is born screaming into a storm.(or, when Azula falls in the Agni Kai with Zuko, and wakes as an exiled dragon princess.)
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Daenerys Targaryen & Viserys Targaryen
Series: souls cross ages like clouds cross skies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812628
Comments: 19
Kudos: 442
Collections: A:tla, Identity Crisis, Reincarnation and Transmigration





	set yourself on fire

Azula dies, lightning crackling under her nails and cruelty on her face.

Daenerys Targaryen is born screaming into a storm.

* * *

When she opens her eyes, she is one. She is on a boat, and she is awake long enough to see that the ship is nothing like her Fire Nation’s. It is old and wood rotten through. And even with the rising alarm in her, the waves rock her crib like it is a lullaby. It pushes sleep on her eyelids, and she is gone.

She wakes after, when they are on land. The people around her are dressed in weathered cotton with no clear allegiance to any nation, and a man leading their party holds a glinting silver sword that her brother's water tribe warrior had favored.

She learns that his name is Ser Willem Darry. The name means nothing to her, not as much as the reverent way he talks to her and a boy with silver-blonde hair like hers.

Princess Daenerys, they all call her, and she looks around at the small house they had settled in and narrows her eyes.

The boy is her brother, Prince Viserys, and he looks at her with so much hatred, it startles her out of her brooding. The dislike in his face is so familiar, it settles her even as she realizes this is not her world.

Daenerys grows quickly, her limbs unfurling like vines and hair curling around her chin. Sometimes, when everyone is asleep and there is only the light of the moon, she stares at herself in the mirror and frowns at the stranger there. She is pale, yes, but her hair is as well. It irks her, to look so different, and the instability that had been bubbling in her when she challenged her brother to an Agni Kai in another life boils behind her violet eyes.

* * *

Not everything is different. There are parallels still, she finds, as she turns two. She is a princess in this life as well, but her royal blood has lost its honor. It terrifies her. For as long as she can remember, honor and triumph are the only things that have kept her alive. She listens, hidden in the shadows as her servants gossip like mongrels.

Her father was insane, they whisper. The Mad King Aerys, who burned people alive and reveled in their ashes. Her eldest brother had fallen at the Trident, crushed under the weight of justice for stealing and raping a highborn lady betrothed to another. Her mother was dead, had perished during her birth.

There is only her and Viserys left, the only ones left in a long line of royal Targaryen, and instead of ruling the Seven Kingdoms, they are scrambling to survive in exile.

She slips away when they exhaust their rumbling, slips out the backdoor and into their pathetic garden, and laughs and laughs.

It seems that insanity nips at her heels no matter what life she lives, poisoning her family line. It follows her like a faithful pet, and she cannot stifle the hysteria in her cackles. A mad father, a mad King, an elder brother with no honor- it seems as if Princess Azula still lives within the confines of her bones. No matter, she thinks. Azula may not have lived to be crowned Firelord, but she is a different person now. Daenerys will live, learn from her mistakes, and destroy everyone who has betrayed House Targaryen if it is the last thing she does.

* * *

She is three when the knight tells her not to stray, to stay hidden. She chafes under the instruction, fury burning in her small belly. If she were still a bender, still capable of summoning fire and lightning with her fingers, he would be dead where he stands.

(Daenerys had been devastated, when she tried to bend and the fire had not heeded her call. She had raged and raged, throwing her things against the wall and clawing anyone who drew near. Her servants had bruises and wounds for days, and her brother glared at her from behind a black eye.

When her fury had cooled, she took a breath and decided that this would not stop her from being great. And when she finds out one night that she cannot be burned, cannot set herself aflame, well. Bending is not the only way to harness a fire.)

The knight reads the wrath in her childish face and backtracks, bowing his head in supplication and kneeling. He explains himself, telling her that her family had been usurped in the rebellion, that they had lost the war. There is now a new king on the throne, a Baratheon, and his fury is a thing to behold.

Her eldest brother had stolen his betrothed, and now the usurper was out for Targaryen blood.

She rolls her eyes, grins, and tells him she fears not. _Let them come_ , she says, _I'll chew on them and pick them out of my teeth_.

Her servants gasp at her words, hands flying upwards as if to ward the assassins away. Her brother gapes at her, eyes wide and young, and she gives into the urge to flash her fangs at him. When he flinches, she sighs happily and is reminded of home.

* * *

They bring her and her brother tutors when she is four, hidden under cloaks and sworn to secrecy as they enter their shack of a house. She might not know the customs of this strange world with no bending, but she has always been hailed as a genius. Easily, she memorizes any language they set her on, the different etiquettes of a royal, the political climate of the noble houses of Westeros and their allies in the Free Cities, and watches the blotchy flush of envy on her brother's cheeks hungrily.

Viserys with his hatred of her reminds her so much of her brother in another life, eyes red with tears as she blew flames on his skin, that it makes her want to bathe his flesh with blood. She did not love Zuko, had resented him for being older and closer to the throne while he shook with weakness and cowardice. She does not love Viserys now. But he is the only other person with the same blood that runs in her veins, and it shows in the color of their hair and shape of their mouth.

Her Targaryen father is dead, but it matters not because she has never been close to the Firelord Ozai. She had thrived under his praise and cruelty, but knows that even without his attention she would have bloomed anyways. Princess Ursa had always preferred her brother, and had called Azula a monster. She has no affection for the woman who borne and birthed her in this life or the last, and hardly ever spares a thought for them both.

This brother, on the other hand, she will keep. She remembers Zuko's trembling voice as he called her a liar, remembers his twitching body as he lay by her feet, wrecked by lightning, and grins. She does not love Zuko, but he was hers in a way that Mai and Ty Lee never were. Azula was born to surpass Zuko, and Azula spent her last breath cursing him as he stood over her dying body. Her entire life, no matter what Ozai had said about her being destined to be the Firelord, was centered on _Zuko_.

From the very beginning, from hatred to longing to obsession, and to the very end, Zuko was hers.

Daenerys does not love Viserys, just like how Azula never loved Zuko, but she will keep him all the same. Taking over the Iron Throne won’t be easy, but her plans will always have room for a scapegoat.

That is what Daenerys tells herself, ignoring the small part of her that chants, _blood of my blood, kin of my kin_ -

And, as she idly watches the flush on his face grow darker at her amusement, she wonders if she can burn Viserys' face like Ozai had done with Zuko. Daenerys closes her too-violet eyes, remembering the screams and acrid burning flesh, and the desperate years after where Zuko had pledged his loyalty to their father time and time again.

She wonders if Ozai had read every letter that her wretched brother had sent, swearing his loyalty to him and the Fire Nation and felt it exhilarating.

(Daenerys wonders if she has to burn Viserys in order to ensure that he will be hers forever.)

* * *

When she is five, they try to get her to learn how to pray in the Septs to the Seven, as if she is a peasant who needed to pray to a god for safety. Daenerys is a princess, whether in this life or the past, and she will triumph over anyone without prostrating herself and bowing. Even as Azula she had merely given the token respect to Agni that was expected of her. She does not believe that her birth as a princess was by chance, by the whims of a god.

She will be great, not because a god decreed it, but because she says so.

She breaks the tutor's fingers for his disrespect. It startles a laugh out of her, how the bones snap easily, and she finally sees another way to replace the hole that had carved itself in her chest when her bending did not follow her into this life.

She dismisses the howling man and her horrified brother beside her in favor for the knight that accompanied them to their exile.

He agrees to teach her how to fight, how to wield a sword, but he does so with a frown on his face. It twists his face, makes his movements stiff. It grates on her nerves and she levels a frosty stare at him. Azula was the only wielder of blue flames in the entirety of Fire Nation, and would have been the strongest Firelord if she had lived long enough. She had trained and bled and gritted her teeth, always striving for perfection.

Precision and results, she chants.

She will not have her training be disrupted by whatever is bothering this man.

The knight does a double take, staring at the set of her jaw and the way her eyes have shifted to an almost-blue shade of fire that is all Azula.

He sighs. He says that she is too young, her body too fragile, her muscles undeveloped. Children should not train this early, he believes, and she thinks of learning how to breathe at three and learning how to bend at four, and thinks that she is behind.

They compromise though, because brandishing a sword is different from holding a fire kata, and he gifts her twin daggers. It feels like an extension of her arms, and when she ties her hair in a top knot to train, she almost feels like herself again.

Her brother tries to join, tries to learn as well. Zuko was the same, she reminisces fondly, always trying to clumsily copy what she could do without effort. When he stumbles, she grins and slashes her daggers at him playfully, and enjoys the exasperation in his eyes.

* * *

The knight dies in her seventh year, falling to poison from an assassin. Beside her, her brother cries as the man takes his last, rattling breath. Daenerys is so focused on her brother's pretty tears that she almost doesn't notice the greed in her servants' faces.

That night, she slips into their room and slashes their throat before they can turn on her. She wakes her brother, daggers still dripping with warm blood, and revels in the alarm in his expression for a moment. When his exclamations start rising in volume, she shakes him slightly to silence him and tells him to pack. She spins a pretty tale of how the servants tried to rob them and kill them now that they have no knight to protect them, how the assassins will not be far, and how they only had each other now. She watches him so intently that she catches the exact moment his hatred of her shifts into worry and acceptance.

She steals them a horse, and it is nothing like riding a komodo rhino. She enjoys herself anyways, and leans against her brother's chest. She has to bite her lip to keep her victorious laughter when he barely flinches, and knows then that he will follow her if he wants to live.

They run under the cover of the night, the small house burning merrily behind them with the dead bodies of their servants and knights. Daenerys finds that she need not burn her brother’s face to ensure his loyalty; burning those who left and betrayed them is enough.

 _Blood of my blood_ , she thinks, and bares her teeth.

They ride well until morning.

* * *

She is seven still when the next assassin stumbles upon them. Because of their age and stature, he moves with arrogant confidence. He dies before he can blink. The others that come after them fall just as easily.

* * *

She is seven yet when they run out of gold. Her brother does not wish to part from the jewels and insignias of their House Targaryen, and she is of the same mind. Daenerys is not sentimental, but she thinks of Azula proudly wearing her Fire Nation headpiece, gold glinting under the light of her fire. They are royalty after all, and even when their honor and throne is stolen from them, their regalia and tokens of their Targaryen house, _this_ , they can keep.

So they steal, and find shelter in ruins and abandoned houses. Daenerys thinks of the years that Zuko had spent in exile, and then on the run from her and the Fire Nation army, and wonders if he felt this hunger and desperation as well.

To stave off the irritation and anger brewing under her pale skin, she takes to teaching Viserys little bits and pieces of the Fire Nation language, painstakingly enunciating the words, various protocols, and war tactics a Fire Nation royal would need. She ignores the peculiar look her brother sometimes shoots her. It is only because she is bored, she tells herself, and because Viserys is the only one of her kin left. The last of her blood, and he is nothing more than flimsy bones and weak legs. Viserys needs much of the knowledge that she can give to survive.

After all, mad or not, Azula has never been a kinslayer, not like her mother or her father or her brother.

(She laughs and laughs when she realizes that; everyone around her always said that Azula was a monster, that she had no heart. It makes her clutch her belly as she is wracked with hysterical giggles at the thought of how her entire family is even worse than _her_ , the princess that they called insane. At least she has never come at her family, at her blood with the intent to kill. Subjugate and _hurt,_ yes, but never to kill. Never that.)

And if she is to rule this world, then she will ensure that the culture she had wielded with as much pride as her bending will not fade to dust after her death.

* * *

They spend three years exiled, flitting from shadow to shadow. Viserys is a steady warmth beside her, quiet and solemn. After the knight’s death, the touch of innocence and youth all but disappears from his violet eyes, and he takes to standing guard over her when she sleeps or bathes. The animosity that had soured their early relationship is gone; Viserys looks at her like she is the sun and the moon and the stars condensed in a fragile body.

And every night, when he curls around her, trying vainly to keep her warm, Daenerys hums a song of victory in his ears to lull him to sleep, ignoring the frenzied chanting in her head- mine mine _mine_ -

* * *

A man approaches them on her tenth year, his beady eyes glued to their violet eyes and fine cheekbones. Their hair have long been covered in dirt and mud, dulling the shine of silver-blonde locks, to hide them from the relentless assassins. By ten, she has already murdered more people than she has fingers. By ten, her brother holds no more hatred for her, but instead stares at her with fearful adoration, as if she would disappear if he blinked. By ten, the only things standing between them and death are her daggers and the matches hidden in her sleeves.

He introduces himself, says that he is Illyrio Mopatis, a magister in the city they had just entered. He says that he is a Targaryen loyalist, that he has been praying and biding time for the day when a Dragon reigns over the Seven Kingdoms once more. He offers them sanctuary, offers them an alliance. She looks at him, at the fine silks that drape his plump body, at the rings on his fat fingers, and at the Unsullied standing at attention behind him.

When she accepts, her iron control is the only thing that keeps her from laughing at the greed in the man’s eyes. He thinks them children, pawns that will dance on his lap as long as he feeds them. She will let him, and when he has no more use, she will slit his throat and burn him for his disrespect.

Later, when she is bathed and dressed and fed, she finds Viserys in her room given to her by their new benefactor. She had known from the moment that the magister had given them two, separate rooms, that Viserys would instantly move himself into hers. She waits, sitting beside him on a bed that felt too soft after years of sleeping on the ground.

Her brother is the first to break the silence, eyes so, _so_ young. He asks if they will stay in this house, if they will be safe.

Azula has never been a nurturing person, and Daenerys is the same. So when she places a kiss on her brother’s brow, murmuring to him in Fire Nation language that no one can harm him without her consent, he settles easily and greedily hoards her affection close without thinking too hard on her words. He stays in her room for the rest of the night, holding her close, and she allows herself to smile against the fabric of her brother’s shirt.

The magister favors her brother, this she can see when he sings praises of Viserys’ strength and cleverness while he merely comments on her beauty. If Daenerys had been a bit more brutal, a bit colder with Viserys, she might have been worried by his blatant attempt to separate them. But even as Viserys laughs and dines with the man, he never fails to return to her bed every night. Even with the magister insisting to redo Viserys’ bedchambers to his heart’s content, Daenerys merely smiles as Viserys curls an arm around her waist.

 _Beloved_ , he calls her, his tongue clumsy around Fire Nation language, and she buries her face in his hair to hide her sharp teeth.

* * *

When Daenerys is eleven, the man presents her brother a sword. It is Valyrian steel, and even without the pictures she had poured over when they were children, she knows it is named Blackfyre. It was said to be lost in the Blackfyre rebellion, but it is now here in Targaryen hands once more. She narrows her eyes at the magister, inquiring on how he came across the steel, and hums when he deflects and says a friend gave it to him.

It is a fine weapon, and where her brother had faltered with her daggers, he shines and excels with the sword. Even the way he holds the sword changes how he stands, shifting his stance into a warrior and a protector and a berserker out for blood all at once. Quite easily, Viserys disarms and defeats men twice his age with just the bare minimum movements.

She watches him wield the steel, remembers the way Zuko grew into his firebending, and feels the familiar churning of longing and hatred in her gut. She watches him, watches the cunning slant of the magister’s eyes, and barks out instructions to keep Viserys focused.

It has nothing to do with the way her brother lights up at her attention, Daenerys tells herself, and continues to sharpen Viserys into a weapon as deadly as herself. War, after all, waits for no one.

* * *

Then she is twelve when she becomes a woman.

When Viserys’ breath hitches one morning, her amethyst eyes fly open immediately. She has spent years huddled up next to Viserys while they curled up in ruins, and years yet sleeping on her bed with Viserys plastered to her back as if to hide her from view. Daenerys knows the difference between her brother’s sleepy gasp and an exclamation of something _wrong_.

The battle instincts she had honed meticulously as Azula have always served her well in this life, reacting to even the smallest change in her surroundings and preventing their deaths countless times. Now though, as she feels sticky liquid between her thighs and sees red blooming on the sheets, her brother crying out for servants and looking at her as if she was at death’s door, she wishes she is less quick to wake.

Puberty, she has always believed, is one of the greatest trials a princess could face. And as Azula always did, Daenerys painstakingly crafts herself and Viserys into an image of perfection and might. A person’s bearing is just another weapon to be wielded, and as Azula, she had always carried herself to high standards- smoothed back top knot, polished armor, and a glinting, deadly smile.

Clad in the traditional black and red of House Targaryen, with their jewelry and insignia of royalty, she had ensured that anyone who saw them knew immediately that they were _more_.

More than peasants, more than lords, more than mortals.

The magister congratulates her from his seat at the head of the table, the brittle grin on his face almost resembling a real one as he looks at how she and her brother had dressed themselves.

They are Dragons, their clothes and bearing screams, and from the pale shade on the magister’s face, she knows he can see the statement for what it is.

 _Fire and Blood_.

Her answering smile is easier, more natural, but the arm her brother had wrapped around her waist trembles. Viserys had been frantic, unwilling to part from her for even a second. Even when he was made aware of her condition, his eyes had been tight with concern still.

During the meal, false platitudes and compliments drip from the magister’s mouth, cloying and curling like poison. She has had enough experience with pompous nobles that her grateful replies ring with something like truth, and yet she caresses the solid silver of her butter knife. It is obvious that he is working up to something, and in another life she might have had him flogged or burned for wasting her time.

Here though, where her authority is severely crippled and her bending nonexistent, she has learned the value of humility and patience, and ensuring the loyalty of others without using fear.

And so, when he finally proposes that she marry a Khal in exchange for a horde of Dothraki warriors to support their bid for the throne, she need not throw her knife into the man’s forehead for his insolence.

She wonders, as her brother roars and rages at the man for daring to sell out his precious sister, if Zuko would have defended her so valiantly if she had taken care to bind him to her. Even with the man’s clumsy attempts at buying her brother’s favor with Blackfyre and other gifts, Viserys will only see her.

 _We are royalty, we are of the blood of Dragons_ , her brother growls, inadvertently repeating the words she had whispered into his ears every night when they were on the run. Like poison, her words clung to his veins and blinded him.

 _We will not curry the favor of savages and whore out the sacred line of Targaryens. My sister is mine and Targaryen alone_ , he hisses, and if Daenerys squints, she can almost see the fire licking out of Viserys’ lips. It is a heady thing, to be worshipped so thoroughly, and she flashes her teeth at the pale and stuttering magister.

When she places a dainty hand on her brother’s arm, his words cut off instantly and lets her speak. Ah, to be trained so well, she thinks, and the magister’s eyes dart between them like caught prey.

For his impudence, she will see him dead. But, she says pleasantly, enjoying the pallid sweat on the man’s fat face, _I will let you live if you prove yourself worthy_.

Her brother is furious, eyes flashing with insanity and wanting the magister’s blood splattered on the tiles, but he follows her lead nonetheless. He knows her better than he knows himself, and knows she will let the man live only until she has wrung out his worth. The man blubbers and blusters, but his eyes shine with an acknowledgement that his Unsullied will not be able to stop them from ripping out his throat and burning his flesh.

Her brother is a warrior-prince, gifted with a sword that will not bend or break, and a berserker who will bathe greedily in the blood of their enemies. She is a dragon, a princess and a leader clad in too-pale hair and too-small hands but will light the world on fire all the same.

_Fire and Blood_.

Never before has the motto of their House applied perfectly to a Targaryen. Then again, Daenerys is more than a Targaryen. She is royalty, whether of the Seven Kingdoms or of the Fire Nation, and she is blessed by blue flames. Fire is her friend, her family, her soul, and it will heed her call even if she cannot bend anymore.

Viserys is crafted in her image, his cruelty and his protectiveness painstakingly pieced together by her tiny fingers night after night. Together, Daenerys thinks, they will have the world.

When he shakily gifts them the three dragon eggs and the sword Black Sister, Daenerys laughs and laughs and _laughs_. That night, when she slits the man’s throat with the Valyrian steel over the eggs and lights his body on fire, she steps into the pyre and feels alive.

In the morning, when the flames have dulled to ash, she looks up at her brother. He is by the pyre, two Valyrian swords in hand as he patiently stood guard the whole night to prevent the magister’s servants and Unsullied from interfering. When he sees the three dragons curled upon her naked, unburnt flesh, he falls to his knees in front of her and calls her _beloved_ in High Valyrian in a wrecked voice. Behind him, Daenerys sees the wide-eyed looks of the magister’s people and flashes her fangs.

* * *

They stay in the magister’s house for the rest of Daenerys’ twelfth year and thirteenth. They wring out the wealth of the man, buying the loyalty of the servants and the Unsullied, and killing the rest who would not follow. Every last drop of resources, they drink and enjoy to their hearts’ content, and they scheme, and let her dragons grow. She melts Black Sister and reforges it with the help of her dragons, turning the legendary sword into twin daggers than shine with promise. It is a testament to her brother’s loyalty to her that he merely watches as she destroys one of their legacies, a gentle smile on his sharp face.

She bites back the scathing remark she would’ve made as Azula; she is Daenerys now, and she knows her strengths and weaknesses like the back of her hand. She is smaller, weaker, from the years of exile and running. While Azula might have been able to wield Dark Sister if she had condescended to touch a weapon even with her superior bending, Daenerys certainly cannot hold up the sword for long periods of time. Even with training, her body is weak.

Let her brother play with swords; she has her mind, her daggers, and her dragons.

* * *

When they are done making tentative allies and hundreds of plans, Daenerys walks, and her brother and her servants follow. While she pretends to be vapid and her brother pretends not to understand Low Valyrian, they observe the Unsullied in Astapor. They will be a fine army, she thinks, but when the Unsullied’s owner insults her and her brother yet again, she feels madness bubbling in her blood. While she might not have an army yet, might not have a nation rallying behind her yet, she is royalty, she is of the blood of dragons. This man, this peasant who thinks he is a god because he holds a couple of slaves in hand, thinks her dull, thinks her only use is to lie on silk sheets and bear children for whatever lord that will buy her hand.

Her crazed laughter cuts off the man’s derogatory mutters, and she observes the man’s offended face as she leans against her brother. From the tight hold her brother has on her waist, Viserys is less amused than her.

That sets her off again, giggles bubbling up her throat as she twists in Viserys’ arms and looks up at her brother. She has always been the more insane of whatever sibling duo she was in, whether she was Azula or Daenerys. Slander rolls off her skin like water, drying and vanishing easily with the strength of her fire. Insults were quips, jokes to her, and she remembers the anxious looks her soldiers had exchanged whenever she was overwrought with manic cackles before burning whoever had spoken with insolence.

But Viserys has less practice in dealing with slights, and she sees a furrow in his brow, a frown on his face- anger and pleading swirling in his violet eyes. Viserys reminds her of a loyal pet; one slur spoken about her or their family will send him into a rage, but only when she allows him to. Such a loyal brother, Daenerys thinks happily, smoothing his tight expression with the tips of her fingers and placing a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth.

The rigid way he held himself immediately eases, and she can barely hold back another laugh when she spies the disgust in the slave master’s eyes. He, who beats and breaks his slaves to mold them into tools, does not know the art of taking people apart and gently filling them up with her touch, her flesh, her ideals. Slaves and tools can be broken, can be bought; a tamed pet will throw themselves in between her and harm’s way without hesitation.

Her brother is no better, and with another fond kiss, she sets him and her dragons loose on the man and his servants as she catches the golden whip that had fallen out of the man’s grasp.

To the screams and scent of burning flesh, she smiles nostalgically at the Unsullied and claims them as her own.

 _We will vanquish the Seven Kingdoms_ , she tells them, commands them, and they beat their spears into the ground in acquiescence.

* * *

Then she is fifteen and she meets Barristan Selmy. He had reached out to stop an assassin from poisoning her in the market, but then he falls in front of her, half dead and bleeding from a chest wound from Viserys’ sword. It has been three years since the magister’s folly, since he had suggested she spread her legs for a Dothraki savage, but her brother’s ire and protectiveness still burns bright.

Friend or foe, ally or assassin, her brother will never let anyone get close enough to touch her ever again.

In between his gasping, wet breaths, Selmy offers allegiance and apologies to them both for failing to protect their family.

Daenerys knows that she is twisted, wrong, and immoral. She knows that she will never love another, and while she may claim to hold affection for her brother, she will not weep when he falls. This man, bleeding and dying from a strike from his beloved Targaryens, still sheds tears in remembrance of her family’s fall and his inaction, even as he prevents an enemy from spilling her blood.

She ignores her brother’s grumbles and soft protests at her supposed naiveté, and orders someone to patch him up. Loyalty is a good motivator, she thinks, but as he looks at her as if she is a god, she thinks that guilt is a better shackle.

 _You cannot die yet, Ser Barristan, because who else will lead our Kingsguard_ , Daenerys chides, smiling and tucking her silver-pale hair behind her ear. Her brother is a burning pyre of barely leashed violence beside her, his violet eyes feral.

It does nothing to deter the worship in the knight’s eyes, nor the admiring glances they receive from her Unsullied and servants. Blood trickles from the wound she makes in her cheek when she bites down to keep her laughter in. Even as they saw that it was her brother, a Targaryen, who brought this man to death’s door, they will still sing praises for her kindness.

Idly, she wishes the rest of the Seven Kingdoms present her more of a challenge.

It will be a bore, after all, if they all fell down and exalted her with just a smile.

And when Selmy regales her with tales of how the Usurper had heard of her army and her dragons, of how there is a spy in her camp, of how Selmy followed the assassin sent by the False King in order to protect them, of how trouble brews in Westeros, lines being drawn in the sand, allies and enemies being formed, blood being spilled, she has to bite back vicious laughter.

The Game of Thrones, indeed.

Too bad for them, she thinks, because Princess Azula of the Fire Nation has always been bad at losing, and Princess Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen of the House Targaryen is no better.

She shields her face against the bright sun, turning westward, to Westeros, and grins.

**Author's Note:**

> ... Aaaaaand they wage war and rule over the entire world. The end.
> 
> Haha jk, but idk if I'm gonna add more to this, since I haven't really kept up with GOT but this idea just wouldn't leave my head. Hope you guys like it!
> 
> Till next time!


End file.
